Re: 'with pixels' (was Re: Engines are started; ...)

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Re-send of message that collided with a problem at SF.net on Sunday:

On Sat, 10 Jul 2004, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:
> 
> >So, let's see: the general plan (before datastrings) is
> >
> >*) datafiles have colums
> >*) 'using' processes columns into records of at most 7 numbers
> >*) get_data() maps numbers from that record to data points
> >
> >Of these three actions, only the first two take place in datafile.c At
> >some point in the process, datafile handling *will* become dependent on
> >the plot style, but datafile.c is not where that point should be.

>  From what I remember, the issue in the image case had to do with how to 
> route the columns in the instance where the user doesn't give the 
> "using" details.  

The option of omitting the using specification is legacy behaviour of
gnuplot.  How about this proposal, then: require binary file always to
have using specifiers, and be done with that complication.

> The question for me is should the user be required 
> *always* to enter specifically how columns are to be used via "using"? 

I have no problems with such a requirement, as far as newly invented
features are concerned --- we already require it for time/date parsing,
e.g.